Virtue and Goals of Actions in Aristotle’s Ethical Treatises
Hendrik Lorenz
Abstract
The present paper focuses on Aristotle’s claim in the <italic>Eudemian Ethics</italic> that the virtues of character are ‘states to do with decision’, by which he means that they are somehow responsible for decisions. In the paper’s first two sections, I explicate the way in which he thinks the character-virtues contribute to the correctness of the virtuous person’s decisions. In two subsequent sections, I articulate two philosophical objections to the picture that will have emerged. I defend Aristotle against the first objection. In articulating the second objection, I rely on texts from the <italic>Nicomachean Ethics</italic> and the <italic>De motu animalium</italic> that John Cooper’s work on Aristotle’s moral psychology has greatly illuminated. I argue that the second objection cannot be answered in a satisfactory way, and that it identifies a philosophical weakness in the moral psychology of the <italic>Eudemian Ethics</italic>, namely that it operates with an overly restrictive conception of practical reason.